By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent ST. PAUL, Ind. — Folks just love to boast about the biggest this or that – the towering mushroom, the longest catfish or the Great Pumpkin out in the patch.
But turnips are king at the St. Paul Tavern in this tiny Indiana hamlet, where a contest for King Root is held annually on Thanksgiving morning … well, it used to be on Thanksgiving, until the guys got in trouble for not showing up for the family dinner. Now it’s on the Friday following the holiday, with weigh-in at 11 a.m.
The contest is a combination of gardening expertise, mayhem, shenanigans and plenty of, uh … bull manure. Just try to get a straight story out of the bar regulars. Memories seem to get fuzzy, depending on who’s doing the talking.
Most of the guys have known each other since childhood, raised near the Shelby-Decatur county line.
“There’s only one rule, and that is there are no rules,” said Greg Lux, adding the contest draws lots of spectators. “This place is packed. The winner used to buy a round for everyone, but one year it cost $160. Now they just buy for the contestants.”
A trophy labeled “King Root” was created by Bill Green of Berne to add to the festivities and holds a place of honor high above the tavern’s bar.
Back in the 1980s, Dean Everhart started bringing in turnips and winter radishes on Thanksgiving morning. A few years later someone made a bet on who could grow the biggest turnip and the race was on.
Mark Everhart said his dad broadcast his turnip seeds in an alfalfa patch and won the contest several years, still owning the record for the biggest turnip at nearly 15 pounds. Dean died in 1998, but the St. Paul Tavern Turnip Contest is still going strong as it heads into its 25th year. Losing that generation of turnip producers brought out a new crop of gardeners bent on taking the trophy – no matter what.
Phil Stieneker was a childhood friend of the Lux and Hall families and heard about the contest for years. He entered his turnip for the first time in 2007 and repeated his victory in 2008.
“After winning in ’07, the St. Paul boys said it would never happen again,” Stieneker said. “There was even talk of a contract out on my life. They can’t stand a western Shelby County boy coming down and kicking their butts.”
Stieneker had a glorious two years as King Root, pulling pranks on the local boys. His business cards magically appeared at the tavern, listing him as the president of the “Midwest Turnip Growers Assoc.”
Then he mailed the regular contestants a flier proclaiming a turnip seminar at the tavern in January 2009.
“I tell everyone my secret is to use Minneapolis Moline equipment, along with a Troy-Bilt roto-tiller and sheep manure,” Stieneker said. “Plenty of manure, if you know what I mean.”
The contest has certainly gotten more interesting since Stieneker threw his hat in the ring. Two years ago, Lux and his cousin, Greg Hall, decided to stage a raid to Stieneker’s turnip patch and have a photographer take a photo of themselves stealing turnips.
“I got wind of the goings on, and I had my wife pull a shotgun on them from the porch,” Stieneker said. “Their photographer caught their faces and it backfired on them. Talk about a Kodak moment!”
In November, Stieneker let the tension build as everyone else weighed their turnips, then the raucous crowd hushed as he walked in at the last minute with a large shopping bag. Contest judge Dean Stafford looked in the bag and his eyes popped open.
“You could have heard a pin drop,” he said. “It’s hard to quiet the crowd at the St. Paul Tavern, but I proved it was possible.”
Stafford then revealed a basketball filled with water.
The 2009 winner was Ryan “Little Bo” Bowman with a 9-pound-3-ounce turnip; his second win in four attempts at the crown. He believes a lot of leaf mulch helped his turnips grow.
“It all boils down to what you’ve got in the dirt,” he said. “Sand and lime, but leaf mulch is the best.
Many come to the tavern with turnips in the back of their pickups, but leave them there after seeing the competition. “There’s probably four bushels of turnips out in the parking lot,” Lux said, with a chuckle.
Tales swirl on Thanksgiving morning. Cliff Kunkel of Greensburg came in one year and announced, “I was going to bring mine in, but someone stole it out of my truck!”
Anyone is welcome to come and join the fun, but for now, the local boys are already planning their strategy for 2010.
“My plan for today is to put up my ‘No Luxes or Halls’ sign on my garden fence,” Stieneker said. |
